Summary
Transformed outreach effort from a state of inconsistent contact methodology, inconsistent effort and outcome documentation, and subjective relationship quality metrics to operating consistent outreach contact strategies using Salesforce. This allowed for all activities with the external partner to be documented creating a pool of data to objectively calculate relationship status.
Skills Demonstrated
Visit SKILLS LIBRARY for more detail
Problem Statement
Current State
The outreach team engages with an uncertain number of external partners, using inconsistent approaches. The method for measuring the quality of each relationship is subjective. No reliable source of historical data exists to verify or validate the state of each relationship.
Gap
Require design of objective, empirical criteria based metrics and underlying data required for each measurement.
Require access for all team members in B2B instance of Salesforce with support from Salesforce administrator.
Build out Salesforce custom features, training and change management
Build out Salesforce custom reporting.
Desired Future State
Outreach team is capable of designing and executing consistent contact strategies.
Activities and outcomes are documented in a single system creating pool of high fidelity data for performance management, analysis, and leadership reporting.
Objective, empirical, and specific criteria based metrics will be used to measure and document the quality of each external partner relationship.
Activities and outcomes are documented in a single system creating pool of high fidelity data for performance management, analysis, and leadership reporting.
Objective, empirical, and specific criteria based metrics will be used to measure and document the quality of each external partner relationship.
My Contributions
Results
Challenges
No historical information available regarding previous effective contact strategies or relationship stages
No reliable data existed for analysis to provide direction or insights
Incomplete and out-of-date list of all external partners
There was no allocation for access to salesforce administrator/development team in the FY when we needed the work done, and no funding allocated for outsourcing – we would need to be creative
Resolution/Outcome
Outcome: Successful
Timeline: On-Time (~10 months from concept to delivery)
Successfully developed criteria based metrics and a custom Salesforce solution for outreach team. All outreach team activities are now documented in salesforce, which then captures met/not-met criteria for advancement through the clearly defined 6 relationship stages. Salesforce reports have been constructed which are used to manage performance and distil into a dashboard to better understand and report on the health of the department and effectiveness of our outreach efforts.
Lessons Learned
Objective, empirical, and specific criteria based partner relationship metrics proved impractical.
There is always some level of subjective feeling that more accurately pinpointed some relationships. In response to this lesson learned, we built the ability into Salesforce to indicate subjective “gut feelings” of the outreach team members into the criteria which, in turn, impacted the documented stages while still accurately documenting how we got there and allowing for future analysis and optimization toward increasing objectivity.